Fan Poll: Will Boston and Edmonton do damage in 09?

October 10th, 2008 by Paul Tutka

Can Slush and the Edmonton Rush find their way into the post-season in 2009?

Your answer to the question in the title above is… a resounding yes!

Or at least that’s what the results from this week’s fan poll indicate.

We threw a bunch of different scenarios athca, asking which ones would be the most likely to happen in 2009, with Boston and Edmonton gettin’ most of your love when all was said and done.

The winning scenario, which had Boston cracking the post-season list in their first year back in the NLL/MILL, finished just ahead of, Bob Hamley garnering both GM and Coach of the year nods as he led the Rush to Cup contender status.

Some other options got some tallies obviously, but the Boston and Edmonton scenario made up for over 50% of the over 700 votes cast this past week.

Bottom line, people really seem to be diggin’ the off-season moves Boston head honcho Tom Ryan and Rush saviour Hamley have flipped (or in some cases, not flipped) the switch on.

Will they really crash the post-season dance though? With the parity we saw last year, whose spot do those teams take out of a pool from 08 that sported Buffalo, Philadelphia, Minnesota, New York, Colorado, San Jose, Calgary and Portland? Are Boston and Edmonton at that level yet? The Jax didn’t get much action in the polls this past week, so maybe them, but who else could the Blazers and Rush leapfrog at this point?

Who will Boston find in this weekend’s USIL Free Agent Camp? Is Hamley done fine tuning a roster that has very few ballers left from the team he adopted?

And even though both teams have impressed many with their improvements this past summer, from speaking to a number of players and even some of our own at the NLL Insider staff, they don’t think their off-season movement is gonna do much for ‘em once January rolls around.

Here’s how this week’s fan poll broke-down…

Boston makes the post-season in their first season back to pro indoor ball 30%
Bob Hamley wins both GM and Coach of the year as the Rush become Cup contenders 26%
NLL games appear regularly on ESPN (or other major network) 13%
An American wins the rookie of the year award 11%
Tim O’Brien cracks Edmonton’s roster and takes his fight crown back 6%
Rochester wins the Champion’s Cup without John Grant 4%
Casey Powell leads the league in scoring 4%
Athan Iannucci breaks is own single season scoring record 2%
Portland sneaks their way back to the Cup final again 2%
Buffalo doesn’t qualify for the post-season 2%